-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [fairuse] My letter to the W3C: Please do not allow any W3C
standard to beencumbered by patents.
Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 02:43:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jay Sulzberger <jays@panix.com>
Reply-To: fairuse@mrbrklyn.com
To: <fairuse@mrbrklyn.com>
CC: Jay Sulzberger <jays@panix.com>
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 02:42:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jay Sulzberger <jays@panix.com>
To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
Cc: Jay Sulzberger <jays@panix.com>
Subject: Please do not allow any W3C standard to be encumbered by
patents.
If a "standard" is not freely licensed, then, with complete
effectiveness,
it locks out free software. Up until now, the W3C has supported a free
market in web software by its old settled policy of requiring that all
standards be free standards, in a sense close to that of "free
software".
A move to trammeled standards, in addition to the complete suppression
of
free software competitors, would also do grave damage to all but the few
companies with the patent departments and lawyers to fight the
non-market
bureaucratic and judicial battles such non-free standards would induce.
Thus any non-free standard does not only eliminate free software, it
eliminates all but a few players, whose sole claim to domination is
their
ability to pay for patent filings and lawyers' fees and gifts to
legislators.
Please do not allow the World Wide Web Consortium to be so crudely
captured by such a small group of companies, which companies did not
invent the Web, and which today do not control it.
Jay Sulzberger
For purposes of identification and free advertising only:
Jay Sulzberger <secretary@lxny.org>
Corresponding Secretary LXNY
LXNY is New York's Free Computing Organization.
http://www.lxny.org
____________________________
New Yorkers for Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....